How to format your references using the Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Markovic, N. (2015). SUPERCONDUCTIVITY. Randomness rules. Science 350, 509.

A journal article with 2 authors

Seelig, J. D., and Jayaraman, V. (2013). Feature detection and orientation tuning in the Drosophila central complex. Nature 503, 262–266.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xia, K., Vanner, M. R., and Twamley, J. (2014). An opto-magneto-mechanical quantum interface between distant superconducting qubits. Sci. Rep. 4, 5571.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Choi, H. J., Roundy, D., Sun, H., Cohen, M. L., and Louie, S. G. (2002). The origin of the anomalous superconducting properties of MgB(2). Nature 418, 758–760.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Fabozzi, F. J., and Drake, P. P. (2009). Finance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Sha, E., Han, S.-K., Xu, C.-Z., Kim, M.-H., Yang, L. T., and Xiao, B. eds. (2006). Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing: International Conference, EUC 2006, Seoul, Korea, August 1-4, 2006. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhou, C., Zemanová, L., and Kurths, J. (2008). “Synchronization Dynamics in Complex Networks,” in Lectures in Supercomputational Neurosciences: Dynamics in Complex Brain Networks, eds. P. B. Graben, C. Zhou, M. Thiel, and J. Kurths (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 135–175.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2017). Want To Eradicate Viruses? They Made Us Who We Are. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/want-to-eradicate-viruses-they-made-us-who-we-are/ (Accessed October 30, 2018).

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office (1999). Telecommunications: Overview of the Cramming Problem. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Gillaspy, K. M. (2012). Words of Samsara. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Vecsey, G. (2013). In Snowstorm, U.S. Finds Remedy For a Cold Spell. New York Times, SP9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Markovic, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Seelig and Jayaraman, 2013; Markovic, 2015).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Seelig and Jayaraman, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Choi et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience
Abbreviation	Front. Synaptic Neurosci.
ISSN (online)	1663-3563
Scope	Cell Biology Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience